The report here feels alarming & unsurprising to many. Giving Andrew Tate or something antagonistic & divisive like End Wokeness a many thousands of dollars payout seems absurd. We don't have much sense of whether there is some reciprocal balanced payout elsewhere, but I have some doubts.
It's clear there's lots of very good amazing active informative smart people with huge audiences who seem to get nothing. So it feels like there's very specific kinds of attention Twitter is rewarding people for here, and it feels concerning that it might only be aggressive personalities that get benefit.
1. to get paid on twitter you need to subscribe to the $8/mo checkmark
2. most people currently subscribed are musk fans (likely right wing)
Consequence: most people who get paid today are right-wing. But if big accounts from the left came back and subscribed to the $8/mo checkmark, they would get paid too.
I googled the name of "Ashley St Clair" and discovered:
> Conservative youth organization Turning Point USA has parted ways with brand ambassador Ashley St. Clair after she was photographed at a dinner over the weekend with white nationalist and anti-Semitic content creators.
It's interesting you bring it up this way. You're not actually offering an alternative classification or even describing why they are not far right. You're just saying that people are calling them that without reason.
Is it possible that you know "far right" is a bad thing, but you agree with these people, so they can't be far right? Or how do you get to your conclusion?
>You're not actually offering an alternative classification or even describing why they are not far right
I don't have to. It's a term with a big history, and it never used to mean "conservative" or mere "right of center".
>Is it possible that you know "far right" is a bad thing, but you agree with these people, so they can't be far right? Or how do you get to your conclusion?
It's more possible that I know what the term means, and the modern use is an overuse to score points for political reasons, just like "fascist" has been. George Orwell, back in 1944:
(...) when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’.
I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people: (...) Conservatives, Socialists, Communists, Trotskyists, Catholics, War resisters, Supporters of the war, Nationalists (...)
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
>Is it possible that you know "far right" is a bad thing, but you agree with these people, so they can't be far right? Or how do you get to your conclusion?
Is it even more possible possible that you don't know what far right has historically referred to, and you think those people are far right just because you disagree with them?
> I don't have to. It's a term with a big history, and it never used to mean "conservative" or mere "right of center".
Sure, you don't have to. But if you don't want to explain why you make the comment you make, you probably just shouldn't make the comment.
> Is it even more possible possible that you don't know what far right has historically referred to, and you think those people are far right just because you disagree with them?
No. Would you now mind explaining how these people are not far right?
> Would you now mind explaining how these people are not far right?
Clearly the onus is on the people who are using the term to explain why they think it applies to the people they are using it on. The onus is always on the person who makes the assertion, not on the person who is sceptical.
Except they’re now making their own assertion to the contrary. There’s a number of comments explaining why far right is an accurate description, and none in support of why it’s not, and a complete dishonest about it all when pressed. Low quality, shit-stirring commentary like that doesn’t belong here.
Ashley St Claire and Benny Johnson both got fired from center-right organisations (TPUSA and the Independent Journal Review
respectivly) for being too extreme. That's literally the definition of "Far right".
Ian Miles Cheong is a climate change denier and one of the main accounts behind the trans panic. He regularly contributes to The Post Millennial.
Rogan O’Handley was one of the instigators of the January 6th riots.
Libs of Tik Tok is infamous for her anti-lgbtq propaganda.
All of the examples given in the article can be accurately described as far right.
Maybe the packaging is different, though I think the contents are similar? I am not inclined to judge people for saying stupid things, what they do is what matters more. For example, for someone like Tate, if the human trafficking charges stick then it's kind of the same ideology you find in people who discriminate against or exploit someone because of their race.
Tate is being accused of exploiting women, which isn't any different from someone who may do that to someone based on other characteristics that they consider "weaker", "stupid" etc.
>For example, for someone like Tate, if the human trafficking charges stick then it's kind of the same ideology you find in people who discriminate against or exploit someone because of their race.
From a little digging I did, because I don't normally follow him (or knew about him that much until the Greta thing and subsequent publicity), it's hard to make head of tails if there's a case or not. I saw two of the girls involved deny any wrongdoing. I doubt a person with 300M+ net worth had a need to do such a scheme. But even if he was a bona fide pimp, both have nothing to do with the "far right". He could be a "far right pimp", but not pimp, thus far right.
>Tate is being accused of exploiting women, which isn't any different from someone who may do that to someone based on other characteristics that they consider "weaker", "stupid" etc.
Millions of people exploit women, murder women (or men), steal, sell drugs, or do whatever other crime, without being far right. Even misogyny is not a far right specific trait. Heck, many apolitical people, leftists, rightists, and centrists have been just that.
My guess is that the label "far-right" is used to describe him and others because their ideology leans towards some kind of extreme. If you listen to Tate's rhetoric (I am only going by snippets here and there), it is very cartoonishly macho. Usually characteristics from that kind of caricature are associated with ideologies that strip women of freedoms and rights, e.g. to birth control or to abortion. So one can assume based on his rhetoric that he's right-leaning at least, and when you couple that with a pugilist personality that gives a "I am always right" vibe, people cannot be faulted for saying that that's a far-right personality.
I think far-right/left is usually used to denote personalities that don't believe in compromise (win-win or lose-lose scenarios), but only dominance of the other (zero-sum outooks).
I’m so tired of this idea that things that walk on two webbed feet, have wings, and quack a lot can no longer be called ducks because it really hurts the feelings of people who agree with them.
When these people hang out with white nationalists, and your entire defense is “but you call everyone who hangs out with white nationalists and dabbles in anti-semitism ‘far right’” it might be time to have a real long think about what it is you’re actually trying to say.
I did as you asked. They seem like someone who covers the tech beat, and have as many positive stories about online influencers beating traditional media as they do negative ones. What pattern do you see?
Did you find any positive stories about Twitter after Musk acquisition there?
At the very least, there's this perspective that Twitter now has much less censorship now. A lot of people (but not a a lot of journalists) liked the changes to the verification system. Twitter is now paying (some) content creators. Do you think she'll ever fairly cover the positive side of these?
I mean, that would arguably be false balance. When a bad thing happens, it is reasonable to expect the coverage to generally be negative, because bad things are bad.
For the vast majority of users, it'd be very difficult to put much of a good spin on the past 9 months or so at Twitter.
> For the vast majority of users, it'd be very difficult to put much of a good spin on the past 9 months or so at Twitter.
I really think that "false balance" line is trite and overused. That's just your perspective. Even if most users agreed with you [1], the number of people who felt their voices are being silenced before is definitely quite significant. Giving zero attention to that fact is just plain bias.
[1]: And the numbers are not clear on that. Despite all the ridiculous headlines, Twitter hasn't died yet.
Meanwhile on twitter today there are plenty of right-wing people (even in like top 50 twitter accounts like Catturd) complaining of no pay-out and that this is evidence the system is still strongly tilted to favoring the left.
Two movies, one screen.
I was reading an article this morning talking about twitter being an indignation machine, but I think that summarizes the mainstream press as well - it's largest impact, acknowledging some good, is to inspire indignation in its consumers. Not a very healthy system in any case or from any side of the aisle.
The report here feels alarming & unsurprising to many. Giving Andrew Tate or something antagonistic & divisive like End Wokeness a many thousands of dollars payout seems absurd. We don't have much sense of whether there is some reciprocal balanced payout elsewhere, but I have some doubts.
It's clear there's lots of very good amazing active informative smart people with huge audiences who seem to get nothing. So it feels like there's very specific kinds of attention Twitter is rewarding people for here, and it feels concerning that it might only be aggressive personalities that get benefit.